Complete the Mission
by Trotracer
Summary: Slices of moments in the lives Prowl and/or Jazz, from before the Great War to the ends of their lives, and everything in between.
1. Chapter 1 Offline some other cycle

AN: Be warned: I'm not planning on fleshing these out. Also, angst and canon typical violence.

Chapter 1 Offline some other cycle

Prowl onlined. Barely. _It felt so much easier to rest..._

Shaking off the delirious thought, Prowl felt a moment of confusion as his processor and battle computer sluggishly came online.

Prowl turned on one bleary optic - the other spat back error messages - and took in his surroundings. Prowl huffed a vent. Even without his memory core completely online, Prowl knew what he was looking at.

 _I'm on a strange planet with a dusty orange sky, and it's always the same._

Carnage. As far as his single functioning optic could see, there were mangled buildings mixed with the occasional mangled Cybertronian frame. Most of the frames were not moving. The blaster fire, at least, had temporarily ceased, but the scent of burnt rubber, dust from crumbling concrete, and the unique sickly sweet smell of burnt sentio metallico clung to the air like the smell of an open sewer.

Prowl looked at the bleak scene with a mixture of weariness and resignation, feeling his olfactory sensors start to ache from the stench. He would never forget that all-too-familiar smell, even if he turned the sensors off.

 _Perhaps it would have been better not to have awakened. Again._

Prowl shook off the thought with another, as he struggled to get up: _This madness must end. I can offline some other cycle._

With a grunt that spat static through his vocaliser, he stood and began making his way through the dead and nearly dead, and checked for life.


	2. Chapter 2 Information creep

AN: I got a little stuck on legalese. Consider yourself warned. Also, a time jump.

Chapter 2 Information creep

Sterile hallways, the distant hum of CR stasis chambers, and beeping spark monitors greeted the blue and teal femme as she walked into the Iacon hospice, her metal pedes tapping gently on the tiled, polished floor. The hospice was the first of its kind in megavorns, the first since the end of the Great Cybertronian War. A nursing home for the eldest of bots, and for the terminally ill.

Where some bots preferred the newly reopened, more tightly regulated relinquishment clinics to end their nigh unto immortal lives, others preferred, for religious reasons, to have Primus choose the time of their death. Yet others' processors were too incapacitated to make the choice to live or die, and the elected government of New Cybertron had recently ruled that euthanasia of a bot with an incapacitated processor was illegal, without the bot's previously written and notarized consent. Conversely, it was also ruled illegal, by a narrow margin, to remove the viable spark, processor, or frame parts of a living or deceased bot for placement into a new frame, without prior written consent of the bot hosting them. During the Great War, your spark, your processor, and your very frame had belonged to your faction. You always, _always_ onlined to fight another day, until there was nothing left of you to salvage. Now that there was lasting peace, largely due to the Neutrals returning to Cybertron en masse, issues like written medical consent were being considered once again. Hence the need, for the first time in millions of years, for hospice care. And for a burgeoning trade in ill-gotten frame parts for the desperate. The bot the femme was coming to visit had no worries of illegal spark snatchers, euthanasia, or frame robbers, though. His ancient spark was slowly but surely fading, as was his once sharp processor, and his frame was so obsolete and worn out that only historians might take interest.

The femme walked past the reception desk, and down the hall, to a room her pedes had traveled to so many times as to be an automatic destination. She encountered no questions; the staff were well accustomed to her presence. When she reached the door entrance, she lightly knocked on the door sill.

"Prowl?" she asked in a lilting voice. "It's your daughter Melody. Can I come in?"


	3. Chapter 3 Bonding Night

AN: SFW. A little suggestive, but no sex.

Set two vorns after the War's end.

A vorn is 83 Earth years

An orn is a Cybertronian day

Chapter 3 Bonding night

Jazz patiently all but dragged a tipsy Prowl down the hall to the suite they had rented for occasion.

Newly bonded in the morning, almost two vorns to the date after the War's end, they had partied with abandon into the evening. In Prowl's case, perhaps with a bit too much abandon. He'd never allowed himself to drink high grade freely during the war, knowing that lives depended on his clear processor to draft battle plans. With the war over, half a vorn honeymoon planned and Sideswipe and Mixmaster trying to outdo each other at the reception, though...

 _Earlier in the evening..._

" _Try this one, Prowl!" Sideswipe said, with an oh-so-honest grin splitting his face, holding up a purplish pink concoction over the bar towards him._

"AFTER _he tries the drink I just gave him," Mixmaster said from next to Prowl's side._

 _Prowl suspiciously eyed the glass flute Mixmaster had given him. It was filled with green energon, then layered with purple energon on top. Wasn't purple energon...bad, somehow? And how many drinks had he drunk again?_

" _It's not Dark Energon, boss," Mixmaster said, noting his scrutiny. "The cobalt flakes turn it that color, and they add a nice flavor. Try it!"_

 _Mixmaster looked so hopefully at him that Prowl didn't want to refuse._

 _After a moment, Prowl shrugged. Might as well. Prowl grabbed the flute, and in a moment of half-drunken boldness, downed the whole thing in one go. He nearly lost some of the last of it, when he coughed from the burn. He wiped his mouth with back of his servo, and Mixmaster patted his back._

" _You aren't supposed to drink it all at once!" Mixmaster said with a laugh. "You're supposed to savor it!"_

" _I was savorrring it!" Prowl whined drunkenly. "S'good! S'rreal good, Mixeemaster!"_

 _Prowl started giggling at the nickname he'd just given Mixmaster. And bent over when he couldn't stop._

 _A much more sober Sideswipe chuckled behind the bar._

" _I've never seen you like this, Prowl," Sideswipe said, more to himself than Prowl._

" _S'my battle compeyooter," Prowl said, overhearing, seemingly proud that he could finish the word. "S'off N' so's my FIMmm chip."_

" _It's off?" Sideswipe asked incredulously. Prowl_ ALWAYS _had his battle computer turned on, and Sideswipe was one of the few who knew what a power drain (and buzz killer) the extra processor was, regardless of the Fuel Intake Modulator chip. No one could drink Prowl under the table unless he wanted it._

" _Yup!" Prowl replied happily, then put on his Serious Face as he pointed a single digit at Sideswipe's chest. "No. More. War."_

" _I'll drink to that!" Sideswipe said, and then took a big swig of the drink he was originally going to hand to Prowl._

" _Heyy, you were goingta givethattomee..." Prowl whined._

 _Any reply Sideswipe was going to give was cut off by a certain black and white saboteur wrapping his arm around Prowl from behind._

" _Hello, love," the bot murmured in Prowl's audial._

" _Jazzy!" Prowl exclaimed, turning around. "Sideswipe and Mixxxmaster were making the nicest drinks just for me!"_

 _Jazz gave Sideswipe and Mixmaster a look; Sideswipe raised his servos halfway in surrender and Mixmaster just looked amused._

 _Turning back to his newly declared bonded, Jazz said, "I'm sure they did, love. Come on, let's go."_

" _But Sideswipe wanted me to try his drink!" Prowl whined petulantly._

 _Sideswipe quickly downed the rest of the drink he had made for Prowl. He had his FIM chip turned on, after all, being the bartender._

" _No drink here!" Sideswipe said._

" _But-" Prowl started._

" _It's okay, love," Jazz soothed, slowly rubbing his servo over the back of one of Prowl's doorwing joints suggestively._

 _Prowl groaned loudly. Sideswipe covered his snicker with a servo._

" _Remember?" Jazz asked. "We have_ PLANS _tonight."_

" _Plans? I_ like _plans!" Prowl exclaimed happily._

 _Sideswipe rocked with the force of another badly covered snort._

" _Come on, then, love," Jazz said, gently placing his arm through Prowl's elbow and pulling him off the bar stool._

 _Prowl followed this time, giggling and none too subtly running his digits over Jazz's aft._

 _Mixmaster watched the pair leave with a certain fondness._

" _Have fun, boss," he said quietly._


End file.
